Bounding Biomedicine
Subtitle: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780226345840
Subjects: Alternative medicine; Medicine, united states
Description: During the 1990s, an unprecedented number of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine, an umbrella term encompassing chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM, spending at least $27 billion out of pocket.'Bounding Biomedicine' centers on this boundary-changing era, looking at how consumer demand shook the health care hierarchy. Drawing on scholarship in rhetoric and science and technology studies, the book examines how the medical profession scrambled to maintain its position of privilege and prestige, even as its foothold appeared to be crumbling.